For the second straight year, a three-loss SEC team will make a passionate College Football Playoff case.
Will No. 16 Texas be heard? The Longhorns upset No. 3 Texas A&M 27-17 at DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium on Friday – a Rivalry Week special that shook up the SEC championship – and perhaps CFP – race.
Texas (9-3, 6-2 SEC) knocked the Aggies (11-1, 7-1 SEC) out of the SEC championship game. Did Texas – the No. 1 team in the AP Preseason Top 25 poll – also move into the playoff discussion along the way?
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“You tell me?” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian rhetorically asked on the ABC telecast. “That team is undefeated — No. 3 in the country — a lot of the pundits out there think they’re the No. 1 team in the country, and we just beat them by 10 points.”
Sarkisian wasn’t finished stating his case.
“I think this — if you really look at the body of work and you look at the Southeastern Conference and what we have to go through every week — and you look at the non-conference schedule we played to go to Ohio State in Week 1 and lose by seven and we out-gained them by nearly 200 yards,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve got a really good football team, and it would be a disservice to our sport if this team is not a playoff team when we went and scheduled that non-conference game. If we’re a 10-2 team it’s not a question.”
That echoes arguments made by Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina last season – three-loss schools that were left out of the CFP. That created a debate that overshadowed a blowout-riddled CFP first round last year. If the Longhorns get left out, then that pattern is going to repeat itself. Texas has a better case than those teams, too.
Will it be enough?
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How Texas upset Texas A&M on Black Friday
To be fair, the Longhorns did not look anywhere near a CFP team in the first half. Quarterback Arch Manning completed just 8 of 21 passes for 51 yards, and the Longhorns managed just 61 rushing yards.
Texas A&M quarterback Marcel Reed suffered an ankle injury in the first quarter, but he returned after a brief exit. The Aggies led 10-3 after an 8-yard TD run by KC Concepcion on a jet sweep with 56 seconds left in the first half.
Texas, however, flipped the momentum in the third quarter. Manning led three straight scoring drives in the second half. He lofted a 29-yard TD pass to Ryan Wingo with 7:12 remaining in the third quarter. A 54-yard pass to tight end Jack Endries set up a 2-yard TD run by Nick Townsend on the first play of the fourth quarter for a 20-10 lead.
Texas A&M running back EJ Smith cut the lead to 20-17 with a 13-yard run with 9:15 remaining. Texas responded, however, with a 35-yard TD run by Manning with 7:04 left in the fourth quarter.
Michael Taaffe intercepted Reed with 3:41 left, and Kobe Black added another interception with 2:26 left to seal the victory.
Manning finished 14 of 29 for 179 yards and a TD. Quentrevion Wisner had 19 carries for 155 yards. Reed finished 20 of 32 for 180 yards and two interceptions.
MORE: Arch Manning makes statement with rivalry win
Making Texas’ case for the College Football Playoff
How many of the teams ranked No. 10-15 in the CFP rankings could Texas leap-frog in the final two rankings?
– No. 15 Michigan would be eliminated against No. 1 Ohio State.
– The Longhorns have a 34-31 head-to-head victory against No. 14 Vanderbilt on Nov. 1. That might be enough to get past the Commodores even if they beat No. 19 Tennessee on Saturday.
– No. 11 BYU and No. 13 Utah could be bypassed based on the victory against the Aggies. The Big 12 is shaping up to be a one-bid league if No. 5 Texas Tech wins out.
That leaves No. 10 Alabama and No. 12 Miami.
In the short term, Texas needs to root for Auburn and Pitt on Saturday.
What is the strength of that case? The Longhorns have three top-10 victories – including wins against Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. The Sooners are now No. 8 in the CFP rankings. The Commodores and Sooners have two losses each.
Why would a three-loss Texas team deserve to be in over those teams? It comes down to an intriguing non-conference loss. No. 1 Ohio State beat the Longhorns 14-7 on Aug. 30. In the post-game press conference, Sarkisian unknowingly foreshadowed the debate at hand.
“I don’t think either us or Ohio State, for that matter, is going to get punished for playing in this game from a CFP standpoint,” Sarkisian said.
That is a compelling statement. Had Texas scheduled a soft non-conference opponent instead of going on the road against the defending national champion, then the Longhorns would be a 10-2 team and likely ranked in the top eight teams. Why schedule tough non-conference games if a benefit of the doubt is not given if the CFP committee will not factor that into the decision making with at-large teams? There are times when a three-loss team should jump a two-loss team, especially given it was a one-score game against the Buckeyes. Ohio State has beaten its 10 other opponents by an average of 32.6 points per game.
That is not the reason Texas is going to get punished. A 29-21 loss to three-win Florida has to be weighed in just as much. Yes, it was on the road at The Swamp in September, but it was a flagrant loss that ultimately could keep the Longhorns out. It was the same case with Alabama after a loss at Oklahoma in 2024.
What will the committee value in that debate? Texas has a unique case – but it becomes a numbers game within the SEC. Texas A&M, No. 4 Georgia and No. 6 Ole Miss all have one loss and are locks to make the CFP. Alabama and Oklahoma also are inside the top-10 in the latest projection, which is important because the ACC champion and highest-ranked Group of 5 champion will make the field.
Texas must get to No. 10 to make the field – and that would give the SEC half the playoff field at that point. If you thought the Miami-Notre Dame debate was hot, then wait until the Longhorns get involved. After all, the Irish – at No. 9 – lost 41-40 to the Aggies on Sept. 6.
As of now, Texas likely will fall short of that 12-team field, but that does not mean that should be the case.
